Thursday, April 05, 2012

Next Week in Tickets: Films playing Boston 6 April 2012 - 12 April 2012

Guess I should have done this a day or two ago, as potentially the biggest opening of the weekend had a Wednesday opening. but, hey, you probably know if you want to see it or not.

That movie is Titanic, which is was re-released in 3-D on Wednesday. I've got to admit, the preview that's been running made me remember it more fondly than I expected, and for a 3-D conversion, it appears pretty good. No 2-D showtimes in the Boston area, so if you just want to see the movie again without it being modified, you're out of luck. It plays the Arlington Capitol, Fresh Pond, Harvard Square, Boston Common, and Fenway.

Another blast from the past, potentially, is American Reunion, in which the characters from American Pie get back together for their 13-year reunion. Most of the cast has returned. It plays Somerville, Fresh Pond, Harvard Square, Fenway, and Boston Common.

Boston Common will augment that line-up with an import from Hong Kong, Love in the Buff. It's Pang Ho-cheung's follow-up to Love in a Puff, a charming little comedy that it can hopefully stand apart from, as the first movie hasn't received a North American release. Word seems to be that the new one is just as good, though, so it might be worth a look.

Kendall Square's main opening comes more by way of Japan, as Jiro Dreams of Sushi follows Jiro Ono, a master sushi chef who still works in his tiny subway sushi bar at the age of 85 and feels he still has more to learn - which puts his son and designated heir in a bit of an awkward position.

Also opening is Losing Control, a locally-made romantic comedy about a research scientist (Miranda Kent) a bit gun-shy of committing to her boyfriend (Reid Scott). Could be fun, and seems to invert the gender roles in an interesting way. Writer/director Valerie Weiss will be on-hand over the weekend, doing a Q&A after the 7pm shows on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday and introducing the 9:40 ones. Pretty much zero chance of that happening with Thin Ice, which was taken from its director, re-edited, and re-scored, and the end result winds up being not very good.

Over at Coolidge Corner, The Raid and Footnote continue to own the large screens (though there will be no 7:20pm show of The Raid on Wednesday as the theater is used for MassMouth's Story Slam Finals), but The Pruitt-Igoe Myth opens up in the screening room; it's a documentary about a housing project in St. Louis that was hailed as revolutionary when it opened but was demolished twenty years later as the city and the concepts of what urban housing should be rapidly changed.

The midnight shows this weekend are larger-than-usual presentations: On Friday scream-queen Linnea Quigley is on-hand to introduce her 1984 exploitation flick Savage Streets, but the price of a ticket also gets short films, music videos, and a live performance by one of the bands, Sexcrement (whose video stars Ms. Quigley, bringing us full-circle). Saturday's midnight, meanwhile, is all four hours of Kill Bill I & II.

The Brattle will also have plenty of special guests in the upcoming week, most notably during the Ghett'Out Film Festival, which runs Friday to Sunday (before moving to New York City on Monday) and features movies by outsiders relative to the rest of the French film industry. Tuesday, meanwhile, has a Balagan "Projection Performance" by Bruce McClure, and Wednesday has writer/producer Michael Cuscuna there to introduce Blue Note: A Story of Modern Jazz, part of the Office for the Arts at Harvard's year-long celebration of the jazz label.

There are no guests at the other shows, but they've got Scott Pilgrim vs The World at midnight on Friday and Saturday. Thursday evening has another Blue Note screening, a double feature of 'Round Midnight (featuring Dexter Gordon and Herbie Hancock) and Roger Vadim's Les Liaisons Dangereuses, which features a score by Thelonious Monk.

Yet more guests at Harvard Film Archive, as Ed Pincus, Lost and Found has Pincus introducing and discussing every screening, along with various other guests - David Neuman for Black Natchez & One Step Away on Friday and The Way We See It on Sunday, Rob Moss and Ross McElwee for Diaries on Saturday, Steve Ascher and Scott MacDonald on Sunday; and Lucia Small for The Axe in the Attic on Monday.

One last guest appearance - screenwriter Diane Lake will introduce Friday evening's screening of Frida at the Paramount theater's screening room as part of "ArtsEmerson Presents". After that, they have the first of two movies by Peter Greenaway, on Rembrandt: Rembrandt's J'accuse plays Friday and Saturday nights and Nightwatching plays Saturday night and Sunday afternoon. And on Saturday afternoon, they present their next Gotta Dance screening - a 16mm print of Busby Berkeley's Babes in Arms with Mickey Runy and Judy Garland.

Over at the MFA, Senna and The Boston Turkish Film Festival continue, wrapping up their runs on Sunday. They start their next cycle on Wednesday the 11th with the first screenings of Gerhard Richter Painting, a profile of the German artist that contains apparently rare footage of Gerard Richter in the studio... painting. The second annual "Hollywood Scriptures" film series begins on Thursday with The Squid and the Whale, running through Sunday.

The Regent Theatre in Arlington has two movies this week. Legend of Aahhh's: A True Story is a ski film from Greg Stump, who made The Blizzard of Aahhh's a quarter-century ago, which not only covers skiing and Stump's life, but the history of the ski film itself. They've also got a second screening of All In, a documentary about the recent boom in poker.

Housefull 2: The Dirty Dozen opens at Fresh Pond, a sequel to a popular but apparently not well-regarded Bollywood romantic comedy that likely ups the ante on the number and zaniness of romantic entanglements and misunderstandings.

The second-run shuffle moves a couple of movies from Kendall Square to the suburbs. Somerville picks up Friends with Kids, while Footnote plays at the Arlington Capitol.

Also, let's take a minute to acknowledge the formal end of the Stuart Street Playhouse; they stopped showing movies on any regular basis roughly a year ago, but the website seems to indicate that any lingering association with the West Newton Cinemas and Belmont Studio is gone; "Theater 1" is now a branded function space operated by the hotel. A shame; it was a nice little spot that never figured out a way to exist in the shadow of the nearby multiplex.